An Analysis of Harlem Shake Video's Viral Marketing Success

The provided content discusses viral videos and their popularity in marketing. It highlights how these videos can be profitable for companies due to their low production cost and easy promotion through word-of-mouth. The study focuses specifically on the Harlem Shake video, emphasizing that its findings may not generalize to other types of videos.

The Internet Phenomenon of the Harlem Shake
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Contents
ABSTRACT:...................................................................................................................................3
INTRODUCTION:..........................................................................................................................3
HOW THE VIDEO WENT VIRAL AND THE BOT GRAPH......................................................4
STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS.......................................................................................................5
SPECIFIC STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS.....................................................................................6
SPECIFIC STAKES OF THE STAKEHOLDERS.........................................................................7
LITERATURE REVIEW:...............................................................................................................8
RESEARCH OBJECTIVE:.......................................................................................................11
RESEARCH QUESTIONS.......................................................................................................11
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY:.................................................................................................11
RESEARCH METHODS:.........................................................................................................11
DATA COLLECTION:.............................................................................................................12
FINDINGS FROM THE STUDY:................................................................................................12
CONCLUSION:............................................................................................................................13
LIMITATIONS:............................................................................................................................14
REFERENCES:.............................................................................................................................14
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ABSTRACT:
The paper introduces the reader to Harlem Shake which is a video that went viral in early
February, 2013. Over the month different versions were uploaded about a total of 100,000 times
with views totaling about 400 million. The paper then attempts to explain the various reasons
which went into making the video such an internet phenomenon and what makes it different
from the Gangnam Style video which currently holds the record for the most number of views
for any video on Youtube at 1 billion plus number of views. Viral videos are the new methods
being employed by corporates for positioning their products and hence the paper then attempts to
analyse the business opportunities associated with viral videos and Harlem Style in particular.
The paper then ends with the legacy and impact that this video has had on popular culture and
the changes online media and globalization is bringing to our lives.
INTRODUCTION:
The Harlem Shake is a viral video or an Internet meme which was for the first time uploaded on
popular video sharing website Youtube for the first time on 2nd February, 2013 by a user named
The Sunny Coast Skate. Since then, there have been about 100,000 versions of the same
uploaded with the total number of views being about 400 million. The length of the video is
between 30 and 32 seconds which consist of an excerpt of the song by “Harlem Shake”. This
song is popularized by musician Baauer. Video usually starts with one person who is either
masked or helmeted. This person starts dancing alone to the song for around 15 seconds. This
people is sourrounded by other people who are doing their own work and are not paying any
attention to the dancer. They act like they are unaware of the dancer (Broxton et al., 2011). For
the next part of the video, all the people starts dancing on some conclusive crazy steps when the
bass drops. This dancing style is different from the starting Harlem Shake style of dance. In this
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part of the video, people wear crazy clothes, costumes, outfits or minimum clothes. They also
use weird type of props. Viral videos are very popular these days. Companies, people or groups
use them to promote their products or campaigns, to get publicity or for the fun purpose. Videos
are any other medium of this which have some surprising element or any fun element attracts the
viewers and they share it with their other friends. This chain keep going which increases the
viewers of the videos. Social media is playing a big role in making videos popular. It is a way of
interaction and sharing through which users share the videos.
HOW THE VIDEO WENT VIRAL AND THE BOT GRAPH
When the timeline of all the events around the video are observed, it is found that,
February 2, 2013: The Sunny Coast Skate uploads their video of the Harlem Shake at 1:17am,
which is that version of the video which sparked the viral video turmoil. After that morning,
DizastaMusic (or Filthy Frank) a Youtube user uploaded a short version of the video Harlem
Shake video at 11:38am (Clarke, 2016). An another version of The Sunny Coast Skate’s Harlem
Shake was out in the afternoon and credit went to The Sunny Coast Skate for the original video
version they uploaded. In the next few days, videos stay comparativelylevel with a few likes on
sites here and there but don’t achieve any momentum.
February 6, 2013: few users on Twitter with more than 1.5 million collective followers started
tweeting about the videos of Harlem Shake. This was the first sign of Internet viewers’initiatives
to mark their way toward the first kind or generation of Harlem Shake videos.
February 7, 2013: Electronic artist Diplo re-tweets this version of the video of Harlem Shake to
his large number of (800,000+) Twitter followers, that went viral. This tweet was only above
College Humor’s tweet prominence the videos and their own another versions of video. It was
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followed by large number of retweets of the Harlem Shake videos. At that time, Harlem Shake
video’s views started growing exponentially (De Bruyn and Lilien, 2008). The viral video was
borne.
The BOT graph of the number of tweets about the Harlem Shake video is shown below:
Figure 1 - The BOT graph of the number of tweets per day about the Harlem Shake
As can be seen in the BOT graph the exponential growth started from around 9th February and
reached its peak on around 17th February, 2013.
STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS
Given below is the stakeholder map for viral videos:
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Music: It is the first and most important part of any video. People like the video because they
like the music of it. Unique and entertaining music gets more popularity than the usual music.
Search Engines: They play a vital role in spreading the news. Whenever people search for such
content, search engines show the results on very first page. High ranking to such videos make
them more popular.
Video uploaders: They do the hard work of making and uploading the videos on various
channels from where others can download and view it. They might get some incentive to it or
sometimes it is just for fun purpose (Eckler and Bolls, 2011). Company can associate their
campaigns with it to promote their products.
Advertisers: They earn their profits by associating with such videos. They make the videos a way
to reach a large population. Advertisers make profit by uploading their advertisements with these
videos. They place the ads between, at beginning or at the end of the video.
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Viewers: Viewers make the video popular. They watch such videos only for entertainment
purpose which becomes the source of revenue for some other companies, advertisers or groups.
Video sharing websites: Social sites plays very important role for this. They spread the news
very fast. People share the video through these sites with their friends or relatives (Ferguson,
2008). These sites gain the popularity with the increase in footfall and receive more ads because
of this.
SPECIFIC STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS
Given below are the specific stakeholders for Viral Videos such as the Harlem Shake
Music Musicians like Baauer for Harlem Shake
Search Engines •Google
•Yahoo
Video Uploaders •Companies who wish to market their products
•Common users of the video sharing websites
Video Sharing Websites •Youtube
•Metacafeetc
•Social sites
Advertisers Corporations who wish to advertise on the Videos
Viewers Common users of the video sharing websites
SPECIFIC STAKES OF THE STAKEHOLDERS
Given below are the specific stakes of the stakeholders
Music •Musicians earn royalty on the music pieces used in the viral videos
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•Due to the increase in their popular appeal they get to perform at concerts etc, further
increasing their earnings
Search
Engines
•Search Engines like Google own Youtube and hence make a huge profit •Increased
number of hits on the website due to more viewers searching for videos like Harlem
Shake
Video
Uploaders
•Firms must make innovative videos to attract the attention of the various viewers
surfing the site
•For common users it is a shot at instant fame
Video Sharing
Websites
•Websites like Youtube get to make huge revenues due to viral videos
•High competition between sites like Youtube, Metacafe, Dailymotion etc to get the
most videos which have a potential of going viral (Highfield and Leaver, 2016)
Advertisers •Placing an advertisement in a viral video will get companies a lot of publicity for
their products
•More effective than any other form of advertising
Viewers
•Video Sharing Websites have become a very important form of entertainment for a
majority of the internet users
•The concept should not get boring and repetitive, otherwise the concept will die
down
LITERATURE REVIEW:
This paper offers research on viral videos, frequently posted short or large videos, visual memes
which track large scale of remix videos in the social media. Visual memes are mined by highly
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scalable or novel detection algorithms which are developed purposefully. This includes 80%
recall and 96% precision. Re-sharing of videos by the viewers on social sites, mails or other
means increases the phenomenon of a video going viral. These videos become popular on social
sites through internet sharing. To better understand the concept of viral videos on social sites or
Youtube analysis of sharing and how it impacts the popularity is vital. Youtube has more than
1.5million users who view and share videos over there (Hu, Wen, and Feng, 2016). Advertisers
got attracted towards this concept of viral advertising in recent years, yet there is very little
information available on how it works by just sharing the information. This research studies and
explored the methods of effects of viral advertising on the emotions of the people, how its tone
affects mindset of people. Unpleasant, coactive and surprising element of viral videos ads
attitude towards forwarding intentions, their brand and related ad. Marketing trends are different
for different perspective. Emerging marketing trends such as viral marketing, word of mouth
differs, any attempt to analyze these trends in the perspective of return on investment can not be
fixed for all. Two factors which are significant in determining impact or influence in viral
marketing are role of influencer and the level of networking he possess (de Seta, 2015).
Person-to-person analysis has been conducted by the researchers who has required network. It
consisted of 4million persons who recommended to 16 million another person about half million
products. It was observed that the cascade sizesand proliferation of recommendations are
important. These are explained by a general stochastic model. Social media impact most the viral
videos. Measurement of this effect was evaluated by turning traditional approach on return on
investments. That is, rather than emphasizing their respective marketing investments and
figuring out the return in investment with regard to response from consumers, managers should
start by taking into account motivations of consumers to prefer social media. After that,
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managers should figure out investments in social media by consumers before engaging with the
brand of the marketers. (JafariAsbagh et al., 2014). Viral videos are part of marketing which are
specific to a particular need of the company. These videos can be used by more than one
company at the same time. Other stakeholders also get benefitted because of the popularity of
such videos. Viral videos are profitable for companies because their production cost is
comparatively low and promotion is easy. Because word of mouth is more fast and reliable
source of marketing. Such videos attract the attention of large population and are shared by them.
There was little indication of any work commenced to measure the efficiency of viral marketing
campaigns. This reportpurposes to report on research commenced to definekey criteria which
viral marketing specialiststrust should be used to analyze the success of viral marketing
campaigns.
An initial valuation of the composite relationships has been done whichenterprise viral political
videos by investigative the interchange between size of audience, campaign statements, blog
discussion, and media coverage of mainstream of the popular online political video from 2008
campaign (Kauffman, 2007). Social media benevolences potentially greatoccasions for new
forms of commerce and communication between consumers and marketers. As advertisers
characteristicallyneed to find approximate way to shadow their marked audiences, many new
opportunities of media are accessible to advertisers.
Experts says the “Harlem Shake” sensation was embryonic behavior from the amass mind of the
internet—ad hoc, accidental, and uncoordinated. But this is not true. The actual story of the
video of “Harlem Shake” displays how a popular culture changes and how it can stay same. Bits
of memes and informationspread from one mind to another through imitation, it depends on
selection of video or living structures used in the video. Both metaphorical and technical things
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in the video matters. New information received through these videos changes human mind and
his behaviour. It can be done deliberately through melodies, catch phrases and slogans. It tries to
propagate these things as far and as fast as possible which makes the video viral. People think
that Harlem Shake video went viral spontaneously and there was no financial support behind it
but it is not true. It follows popular uprising and pop culture (Petrescu, Korgaonkar, and Gironda,
2015).
Here’s how the meme and the myth began. The Harlem Shake had a profound viral impact, and
by simply "going viral" many participating brands saw outstanding outcomes from uploading
simple, trivial videos in terms of impact on their initiatives taken for internet marketing. To get a
better idea of how a viral video can impact a given brand, check out the Un-metric infographic
from the Shorty Awards that was posted in this Mashable article a few years back. It shows the
impact that the Harlem Shake video had on social media platforms such as YouTube and
Facebook.
RESEARCH OBJECTIVE:
To analyse the reasons for the explosion of Harlem Shake on the internet and find out ways in
which viral videos can be used effectively for marketing.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
1) What factors are responsible for making a video go viral?
2) How are the various stakeholders affected by a viral video?
3) How is Harlem Shake comparable to other viral videos e.g. Gangnam Style?
4) Do the advertisers specifically choose viral videos to place their advertisements?
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5) How are Video Sharing Websites benefitting from viral videos?
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY:
RESEARCH METHODS:
This study approach is both qualitative and quantitative. Quantitative methods are used to show
the increase in number of sharing within a year through the BOT graph. This shows the increase
in number of video shares is growing tremendously. Qualitative information is used through
literature research and other online research. Views of other people are analyzed to research the
topic. Mixed methodology is followed which provides the holistic view of the research topic
which is supported by data.
DATA COLLECTION:
Data collected only through secondary data research. Most of the sources of the information are
the previous research done on the topic or the views of people on online platform. Information
collected from the previous journals is used for analysis purpose. Past incidents of viral videos,
their purpose and impact are being analyzed here. Library sources, newspaper articles, social
sites articles and individual views are used for this purpose. Data used here is not collected
through direct interviews or any other primary search methods.
FINDINGS FROM THE STUDY:
The accomplishment of the videos was in part credited to the expectancy of the short length and
absconding moment, building them accessible to view. The Harlem Shake is very easy for its
followers and fans to regenerate, as it has a single focused camera shot and only single jump cut.
The easiness of the video concept permits fans substantialpossibility in generating their own
unique variant and creating their mark, while maintaining the simple and basic elements. In its
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basic form, it can be created with only two people; a classier version can even involve a crowded
stadium. The explosion has much to do with the concept. The clips are goofy, simple and easily
adapted by the next set of stars. The other dynamic is that fans are learning to do more than just
forward videos on to friends. Not just regular internet users but even companies don’t want to be
left behind in this viral video rush. For example, within a week of the trend taking off, Pepsi had
uploaded two Harlem Shake videos. Brands including Puma, Nintendo and Dr Pepper
contributed versions of their own. Moreover, there is a large playing arena for fans and
celebrities alike, with least guarantee of success for any of the group. There is a sturdytone of
humourgoing through every video which is not reliant on language, again increasing its
prospective to blowout virally (Subramani and Rajagopalan, 2003).
The achievement of Harlem Shake video also highlights a conversion of direction for music
rights holders. With the exclusion of a takedown notice issued when established artist Azealia
Banks tried to upload her own version of the track, Baauer and his label, Mad Decent records,
instead made use of YouTube's Content ID database to assert copyright over the fan-made videos
and claim a part of advertising income in respect of each one. Neither YouTube nor Mad Decent
would authorize how much money has been made from clicks on Harlem Shake videos, but it is
predictable be a substantial amount. Earlier viral hits on YouTube have made big profits for
content owners. “Gangnam Style,” the viral sensation of 2012, earned Korean pop star Psy and
his managers a reported $870,000 from YouTube ad income alone. The unprofessional YouTube
classic Charlie Bit My Finger video netted Charlie’s parents more than $150,000.5
There have been some major cultural changes that have accompanied the rage of The Harlem
Shake. On Wednesday, the trade publication Billboard announced it is now incorporating U.S.
YouTube streams into its chart rankings. That means views of an artist's music video—as well as
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user-generated clips that use the official song—are being tallied along with radio airplay, paid
downloads and other factors that make up Billboard's singles charts. The new methodology
catapulted Baauer's "Harlem Shake" song to No. 1 on the Hot 100.6
It remains to be seen know as to how long can the meme remain in the public consciousness (V,
2009).
CONCLUSION:
Companies make the videos to gain the popularity, to promote their product or to run a specific
campaign for image makeover. Harlem shake was also such attempt to gain business advantage
out of it. It has been observed that it is the corporates who make the video viral not the viewers.
People shared it because it was a famous video which was the main purpose of the video. Such
videos can also be sued for other purposes. Viral videos are part of marketing which are specific
to a particular need of the company. These videos can be used by more than one company at the
same time. Other stakeholders also get benefitted because of the popularity of such videos. Viral
videos are profitable for companies because their production cost is comparatively low and
promotion is easy. Because word of mouth is more fast and reliable source of marketing. Such
videos attract the attention of large population and are shared by them.
LIMITATIONS:
This study is in context of Harlem Shake video only which can not be granted for any other
video. Every video have different style and purpose which might not fit this video. All the
evidences and views collected here are only for Harlem shake video related to its popularity.
Therefore this research findings might not stand true for any other video.
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JafariAsbagh, M., Ferrara, E., Varol, O., Menczer, F. and Flammini, A. (2014) ‘Clustering
memes in social media streams’, Social Network Analysis and Mining, 4(1). doi:
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